OpenAI launches national Australia program with NEXTDC to build sovereign AI infrastructure, skills, and startup momentum
OpenAI has launched "OpenAI for Australia," its first country-level program in the Asia-Pacific region, with NEXTDC as a core infrastructure partner. The plan covers three fronts: a hyperscale AI facility in Sydney, a nationwide workforce program, and startup support with local venture firms.
The message is clear: bring compute onshore, upskill at scale, and back founders to build locally. It's a multi-year push with federal and state partners, major employers, and the startup community involved.
Why this matters
- Sovereign compute: Australia hosts and controls AI infrastructure instead of relying only on overseas clouds.
- Security and resilience: Sensitive workloads can run domestically with tighter data residency and governance.
- Productivity and jobs: Long-term technical roles across engineering, manufacturing, and operations; practical AI skills for everyday work.
The infrastructure: a next-gen AI campus in Sydney
NEXTDC and OpenAI will plan and develop a next-generation hyperscale AI campus at NEXTDC's S7 site in Eastern Creek, Sydney, with OpenAI expected to be the initial offtaker under its "OpenAI for Countries" model. The campus will host a large-scale GPU supercluster for government, enterprise, research, and national infrastructure workloads.
The facility is being engineered for closed-loop liquid cooling, zero drinking water use, and renewable energy integration. The S7 campus is still subject to planning and regulatory approvals.
As NEXTDC's Craig Scroggie puts it, "Today marks a major step forward in Australia's sovereign AI capability." He adds, "The National AI Plan is clear. Australia's next wave of growth is constrained by compute. Sovereign capability is now a strategic asset."
Nationwide skills lift: training for more than one million Australians
OpenAI Academy will co-develop AI training programs with three of Australia's largest employers: Commonwealth Bank, Coles, and Wesfarmers. Commonwealth Bank will distribute AI learning modules to roughly one million small businesses, while Coles and Wesfarmers will roll out AI training across their workforces.
Programs will be built with sector specialists and tuned for Australian industries. As CommBank CEO Matt Comyn notes, "Small businesses are the backbone of Australia's economy... but too many small business owners tell us they simply don't have the time or confidence to explore how AI could help them."
- If you're in government or enterprise L&D: Map roles to AI use cases, start with frontline pilots, and set clear guardrails and metrics.
- For CIOs/CTOs: Establish an internal AI academy, define data-access tiers, and measure task-level outcomes (time saved, error rates, customer response time).
- For SMB leaders: Start small-use AI for inbox triage, document drafting, and sales collateral; measure the gains, then scale.
Want a curated path by job role? Explore practical AI course tracks at Complete AI Training.
Fuel for startups: credits, mentorship, and a founder day
OpenAI will support local founders with partners including Blackbird, Square Peg, and AirTree. Selected startups will receive API credits, hands-on guidance from OpenAI engineers, and workshops covering scaling, compliance, and safety. Additional credits will be available for teams that participate in deep-dive technical sessions.
A new annual Founder Day in Australia will give early-stage teams focused time with OpenAI specialists to refine use cases and prototypes.
- Founder checklist: Build a working prototype, define your data pipeline and privacy posture, prepare compliance docs, and show a clear path to customer value.
What this means for government, IT leaders, and developers
- Government: Prioritize workloads that benefit most from local compute (justice, health, critical infrastructure, research). Prepare procurement pathways and accreditation needs early. Set up data-classification policies for model training and inference.
- Enterprises: Shortlist use cases with strong ROI (claims processing, customer support, knowledge retrieval, forecasting). Pilot with a small group, measure, then scale with governance and observability.
- Developers/ML teams: Plan for GPU access, model monitoring, and prompt/version control. Build evaluation harnesses for quality, bias, and safety before production.
Risks and open questions
- Planning and regulatory approvals for S7 are pending; timelines may shift.
- Grid capacity and renewable supply must keep up with GPU demand.
- Fair access and pricing will matter for smaller agencies, universities, and SMBs.
- Model safety, privacy, and compliance will require ongoing oversight.
The bigger picture
The launch formally brings together government partners, major employers, and the startup community under a shared model: build compute locally, upskill workers, and help founders compete globally. Australia moves earlier than most on this front.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sums it up: "Australia is well placed to be a global leader in AI, with deep technical talent, strong institutions and a clear ambition to use new technology to lift productivity. Through OpenAI for Australia, we are focused on accelerating the infrastructure, workforce skills and local ecosystem needed to turn that opportunity into long-term economic growth."
What to do next
- Identify two to three AI use cases you can validate within 90 days.
- Set up an internal AI working group with security, legal, data, and L&D.
- Prepare a data strategy for model usage: access, retention, redaction, and audit trails.
- Engage early with prospective providers on capacity, SLAs, and compliance needs.
Further reading
- OpenAI blog for official updates on the Australia program.
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